Michael Shannon
Michael Shannon
Michael Corbett Shannon is an American actor and musician. Shannon first received attention for his performance in 2002's 8 Mile, where he portrayed the boyfriend of Eminem's character's mother, played by Kim Basinger. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Revolutionary Road in 2008. He played Nelson Van Alden in the HBO period drama series Boardwalk Empire. His performance in the 2011 film Take Shelter led to further critical acclaim, gaining him...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth7 August 1974
CityLexington, KY
CountryUnited States of America
I think if you watch a lot of what I do, you're going to ultimately walk away seeing me. I can't hide - that impression is a personal impression people have of me.
I want to focus on each scene. I'm a real perfectionist, and I don't want to feel like I didn't consider every possible variation of a scene. I come from a theater background, so I'm used to a lot of repetition, and I'm used to really attacking something over and over and over again.
I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.
The thing that is always important to me is the relationships. I feel like until I get around with the actual people that I am going to be working with there is only so much that I can do.
I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.
I like to play characters that get to do it all - to have a bit of comedy here and a bit of pathos here and a bit of suspense here, that's what's fun.
I never went into acting to be able to scare everybody. If I'd wanted to frighten people, I could have joined the C.I.A.
I have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual.
That's one of the great things about acting - you get to pretend you're somebody else, which is great if you get bored with yourself.
There's nothing routine about 'Boardwalk Empire.' It's like being in some secret society where they call you up and tell you where to go: 'Meet us at the corner of such and so.'
One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.
A lot of times people will send me stuff. They will find something and they will send it to me and then I will take a look at it. Every once in awhile I will go on IMDB for 10 or 15 minutes and look around. But I am not a huge gearhead. I don't even have my own computer. I use my girlfriends.
Plenty of people are onto the emptiness but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
I'm just kind of odd. There are dark forces in the world, and if you pay attention to what's going on around you, you end up incorporating it into the storytelling. Maybe it's some aspect of myself that's coming through that people are seeing, that I am in fact a quiet psycho.